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Michael Rendos
Lock Haven
A recent Express Old Photo Album pictured Lock Haven natives, Harry Pinge, Sr. and Harry Pinge, Jr. sitting in front of a field tent at the Pacific Ocean island of Saipan during WW II. While I never had the opportunity to meet Harry, Sr., my friend Steve Coleman once told me that Harry, Sr. was quite a character, having participated in the American military raid to capture the Mexican revolutionary leader Pancho Villa in 1917, World War I, and World War II. I am not sure if Harry, Sr. attempted to participate in the Korean War or not.
Harry Jr. was an individual I knew very well, as after WW II he had earned a teaching degree from what was then Lock Haven State College and then took a Health/PE teaching position at my hometown’s Brockway High School. Mr. Pinge was a highly respected and beloved BHS faculty member from the early 1950s through the mid-1980s. Teacher, coach, mentor, deer hunter, fly fisherman, basketball official, cook, philosopher, patriot -- Mr. Pinge did it all up in Brockway. Mr. Pinge held students to a high degree of behavior and proper decorum, and wasn’t reluctant to call a student out if he thought the student was slacking off in the classroom.
Mr. Pinge had a very self-assured and confident presence about him, and he always made the students feel that, no matter what happened, everything would turn out for the best in the end. By any measure, he was an asset to Brockway High School.